Chimera 1.8 Update: OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Support

type="html">Today MacMan updated Chimera to version 1.8. For Mac OS X developers, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion support has been added. This version will be included in the next MultiBeast release.Chimera v1.8.0 Changes:Added OS X Mountain Lion boot support, based on cparm's patch.Added support for additional ATI video cards.Added additional default ATI video card configurations.Fixed

Wicked Lasers Spyder III Krypton 1 Watt Green Laser Review

Introduction

If you drive a Volvo, care about crash safety ratings, never turn traction control off or wear safety glasses when working in the garage, this article isn't for you. Go make sure your Microsoft Smart Screen Filter is on and browse somewhere else today. I'm not saying this to be mean, but if you continue reading, you will be offended one way or another. (Ed. Note - oh, here we go!)

With major news outlets like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Discovery Channel, Esquire and Maxim Magazines covering stories of death rays, personal light sabers and every far flung story they could, Wicked Lasers had finally broken through the barrier between niche market and retail success with the Spyder III Arctic (which we reviewed), the world's first 1 watt hand held laser. The SIII Arctic really brought Wicked Lasers into the mainstream and with that success came a few failures. Many new customers who purchased the SIII Arctic had to wait several months to take delivery and there were claims of fraud and scams rampant all over the place. The issues were so far out of control I want to tackle them first in this article.

For those who kept their order in and patiently waited for their Arctic found that the device wasn't a cheap plastic toy. The build quality on the Arctic Series isn't anything like what you find in grocery store lasers, nor is its output power. If you took your Arctic and smacked someone over the head with it, you could kill them and not damage the laser housing in any way. The build quality of these Spyder III units is amazing. Wicked Lasers learned firsthand about inventory management and those issues have now been tackled. Orders are now shipping very quickly and delivery times are very reasonable.

That firsthand experience is going to come in handy this year because Wicked Lasers has a new, even brighter model that is the must have laser for 2012. According to Wicked Lasers, green light appears to the human eye 2,000% brighter than blue light. That means you can use a less powerful green laser and still get the same effects we observed with the Arctic model last year. On the other side, you can still get the 1 watt version like we are testing today and take the laser experience to a whole new level.

Try around 85 miles (137 kilometers) to be exact.

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Raspberry Pi delivers its $35 Linux computer

ARS Technica reports the Raspberry Pi foundation has introduced its $35 Linux computer, but got overwhelmed by heavy demand. The product is about the size of a deck of playing cards, it has a 700MHz ARM11 processor and 256MB RAM memory. Demonstrations of the system showed it's capable of running impressive graphics demos and decoding HD video.

The Raspberry Pi foundation attempted to launch its $35 Linux computer on Tuesday evening, but the organization's retail partners couldn't cope with the massive demand. Two British electronic component distributors that intended to sell the product were unable to do so--their websites went down, succumbing to the stampede of eager enthusiasts who sought to purchase the hotly-anticipated system.

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The Raspberry Pi foundation originally began developing the computer with the aim of producing a low-cost system that could be used to teach computer programming to young students. The project has attracted a much larger audience, however, and has gained a tremendous following among Linux users and embedded systems enthusiasts who want to use it for purposes ranging from wearable computing experiments to multimedia set-top box.

Full details over here.

Raspberry Pi delivers its $35 Linux computer - More news at DV Hardware

Lucid Virtu MVP enhances switchable graphics and more

Gigabyte's Tech Daily explains the exciting new features of Lucid Virtu MVP, a graphics virtualization technology that will be included in the company's 7 series motherboards. With Virtu MVP, users will be able to control whether the system has to use the processor's integrated graphics (to save power) or a discrete graphics card, on a per-application level. Additionally, the Virtu MVP technology also delivers Virtual Vsync and HyperFormance. Full details over here.

The other new feature that we�re looking forward to offering you guys is what Lucid refers to as HyperFormance, a feature which claims to substantially improve overall 3D gaming responsiveness. By responsiveness we mean how well the game actually responds to your mouse and keyboard, a key factor that contributes greatly to a better overall gaming experience.

Without getting too technical, Lucid Hyperformance basically examines each piece of data as it passes through the graphics pipeline with the aim of eliminating redundant rendering tasks. This allows for shorter rendering cycles which, in turn translates into better overall responsiveness for you the gamer. We have toyed around with Hyperformance here in our labs, and we�ve been impressed at how the game just feels faster. If you were running at 100FPS, enabling Hyperformance will most likely give you even higher FPS. Not only does the FPS show marked improvement, but so too does the feel and responsiveness of the game.

Lucid Virtu MVP enhances switchable graphics and more - More news at DV Hardware

Broadcom 802.11ac WiFi to be out by mid-2012

NetworkWorld reports networking products with Broadcom's 802.11ac WiFi chipset are set to hit the market by Summer:

Broadcom executives at MWC confirmed today that the chipmaker is "beyond the sampling phase and even in a preproduction phase," according to Michael Hurlston, the company's senior vice president for wireless LAN, for its two-stream and three-stream 11ac chips. 11ac like 11n uses multiple data streams paired with multiple sending and receiving antennas to achieve high data throughput.

Hurlston said he expects finished OEM products, almost certainly access points, routers and the like, to be on sale from Broadcom's customers by mid-2012. Although the chipmaker hasn't announced design wins, Hurlston pointed out that the 11ac roadmap announced last month at CES was publicly endorsed by 14 equipment vendors and network providers.

Broadcom 802.11ac WiFi to be out by mid-2012 - More news at DV Hardware

Project Phenix: transfer of protected HD movies across multiple devices

X-bit Labs reports some content providers and storage makers are cooperating on Project Phenix, a new initiative that aims to enable you to seamlessly transfer DRM-protected HD movies across different devices:

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, SanDisk and Western Digital have revealed project "Phenix, an initiative that will give consumers an easier and faster way to organize, store and move their high definition digital movies and TV shows across multiple devices. In addition to local storage, the content will also be backed up via the UltraViolet industry standard as well as other cloud-based services.

The project is being developed by the newly formed Secure Content Storage Association (SCSA), which will create and license solutions that secure high definition and other premium copyright-protected content on local and portable hard drives, flash memory products such as USB flash drives, SD cards and solid state disk drives (SSDs). Once content is downloaded to a hard drive or NAND flash storage device, it could then be accessed, online or offline, on any SCSA-enabled device such as a connected TV, laptop, Blu-ray player, tablet, mobile phone or game console. The optimized content will be made easily available for purchase via digital download, digital files bundled with physical media, kiosks in retail stores, or other means of secure digital delivery.

Project Phenix: transfer of protected HD movies across multiple devices - More news at DV Hardware

NVIDIA: Tegra 3 in Windows 8 developer systems

NVIDIA confirmed that Microsoft is using the Tegra 3 SoC in Windows 8 test PCs that are distributed to software developers and device manufacturers:

NVIDIA confirmed today that it is working with Microsoft on a program to distribute Windows 8 test PCs to software developers and device manufacturers powered by the Tegra(R)3 quad-core mobile processor with 4-Plus-1(TM) architecture.

This seeding program enables these parties to create a rich ecosystem of apps and devices for Windows 8 on ARM-based processors.

"NVIDIA has a long record of supporting software developers working on the cutting edge of innovation," said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA. "We're furthering this tradition by helping to realize the extraordinary potential of Windows on ARM processors, like Tegra 3."

"Microsoft is excited to partner with NVIDIA to bring developers leading edge Windows on ARM test PCs to support the creation of compelling Metro style app and device experiences for Windows 8," said Aidan Marcuss, Senior Director of Business Planning, Microsoft.

NVIDIA: Tegra 3 in Windows 8 developer systems - More news at DV Hardware